Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The transportation bill must pass in order to replace expiring legislation for roads and jobs. Unfortunately, right-wing House of Representative negotiators are trying to hold it hostage in order to force through approval of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and block any protections against toxic coal ash.

Senator Bill Nelson is a member of the Conference Committee negotiating the final language this week -- Call him today at 202-224-5274 to say that you support a clean transportation bill!

The EPA has developed a strong pollution limit that will help clean up and reduce toxic algae, but big polluters are doing all they can to fight this new standard.

From the Mississippi River Basin, to the Great Lakes, to the Cheseapeake Bay, we are fighting hard to protect America's water from toxic algae. Nowhere is this problem more visible than in Florida, where a telltale green slime covers waterways across the state. This pollution -- and the slime it creates -- has put Florida's water, wildlife, and economy at risk. It's time to fight back against these polluters who have no regard for our communities and our water.

What happens in Florida will set the stage for what happens across the country.

We've seen what toxic algae can do. We've seen how it cripples fishing and tourism. We can't afford to wait any longer to take action. By sending a message today, you'll be joining thousands of others who are calling for strong action to protect our communities, our water, and our economy.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

It takes less than a minuteto submit an online comment to BOEM expressing your opposition to seismic testing. Just go to http://adoptanocean.org/ and click on the word "here" in the Public Comments box on the right side of the web page where you'll see a sample message to BOEM which you can personalize or submit as is.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has proposed seismic testing for oil and gas and mineral sands in the Atlantic Ocean, in a large offshore area from New Jersey to Florida's space coast. Evidence shows that such testing with air guns causes death and severe injury to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins and would displace and depress the catch rates of various species of fish.

Sierra Club Testimony at Jacksonville, FL Public Hearing April 16, 2012

The Florida Chapter of the Sierra is opposed to the proposed seismic testing on the East Coast of the United States as we believe that there is overwhelming evidence that the seismic testing with the use of air guns causes death and severe injury to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. We also believe that such seismic testing displaces and depresses the catch rates of various species of fish.

We believe that the evidence shows that the proposed seismic testing will be very detrimental to our oceans because:

• To search for oil and gas, the industry uses arrays of air guns, which are towed behind ships and release intense blasts of compressed air into the water – just about the loudest sounds human make short of explosives. Imagine dynamite going off in your neighborhood every 10 seconds for days, weeks and months on end. Now imagine that you depend on your hearing to feed, mate, travel, communicate and do just about everything else necessary for survival. That is the situation that endangered whales, commercial and recreational fish, and other wildlife are facing with air gun exploration. This activity has a huge environmental footprint. Air gun noise is loud enough to mask whale calls over literally thousands of miles, destroying their capacity to communicate and breed. It can drive whales to abandon their habitat and cease foraging, again over vast areas of ocean. For example, a single air gun array in the North Atlantic caused endangered fin and humpback whales to stop singing – a behavior essential to their mating and foraging – and abandon habitat over an area more than 100,000 square miles in size. Closer in, it can cause hearing loss, injury and death.

• Big Oil has already applied to MMS and BOEM to run hundreds of thousands of miles of air gun surveys off the east coast. Over the next eight years – according to the administration’s own estimates – seismic exploration would injure up to 138,500 marine mammals and disrupt marine mammal feeding, calving, breeding, and other vital activities more than 13.5 million times.

• Air gun booming – and oil and gas development more generally – threatens our fisheries and coastal economies. Air guns have been shown to displace commercial species of fish horizontally and vertically in the water column on a vast scale – over thousands of square kilometers. The result has been to dramatically depress catch rates of species such as cod, haddock, and rockfish across areas as large as the state of Rhode Island, leading fishermen in Norway and other parts of the world to seek industry compensation for their losses.

• Seismic testing has negative impacts on commercial and recreational fishermen. Commercial and recreational fishing off the mid- and southeast Atlantic (not including New Jersey) generate $11.8 billion annually and support 222,000 jobs. Fishermen in some parts of the world where seismic testing is already occurring are seeking industry compensation for their losses.

• Green-lighting seismic also poses threats to the $20 million whale-watching industry in the mid- and southeast Atlantic. And if the administration takes the next step and opens up the coast to oil and gas drilling, the entire $23 billion coastal tourism and recreational industries are at risk – just as they are in the Gulf of Mexico.

• To reduce harm, BOEM must keep air guns out of sensitive environmental areas, promote use of greener alternatives, and require companies to share data.

• The sole habitat protection the administration has proposed – to protect the critically endangered right whale – is grossly inadequate given the distances noise travels. Under the administration’s proposal, a survey can take place right on the edge of the right whale’s only known calving grounds, completely filling it with disruptive sound. No other species (or fishery) would receive even this much protection.

• According to two expert reports, including one funded by the oil and gas industry itself, greener alternative technologies that could substantially cut the environmental footprint of airguns in many areas are already well into development and can be available for commercial use in three to five years, or less. Yet the administration is opening the floodgates now, in areas it doesn’t even intend to consider for leasing until 2017. There is no reason to rush ahead with this dangerous activity before safer, greener technologies are available.

• Booming-and-drilling off our coasts makes no sense. Ultimately, if we care about our fisheries, our marine life, and our coastal economies, the right vision is offshore renewable like wind farms. Scanning the ocean floor for wind farm development uses a technology that is orders of magnitude safer than air guns.

• According to two expert reports, including one funded by the oil and gas industry itself, greener alternative technologies that could substantially cut the environmental footprint of air guns in many areas are already well into development and can be available for commercial use in three to five years, or less. Yet the administration is opening the floodgates now, in areas it doesn’t even intend to consider for leasing until 2017. There is no reason to rush ahead with this dangerous activity before safer, greener technologies are available.

Thank you for your careful consideration of these comments.

-- prepared and presented by Brian Paradise on behalf of Sierra Club Florida

To protect our quality of life, public health, waterfront
economies, and the wildlife that depends on clean water, the Florida Slime Crimes campaign
has been pushing hard to stop the fertilizer, sewage and manure pollution that
feeds the slime.

Thousands of concerned citizens like you have signed our
petition calling on President Obama and the EPA to protect our water and
enforce strong pollution limits. Our volunteers from around the state have been
hitting the streets with clipboards with the goal of flooding President Obama’s
office with letters demanding action to clean up this slimy mess.

We’re fast approaching decision time
on this important issue! President
Obama and the EPA will soon be making their determination on whether to enforce
strong, quantitative limits for pollution in Florida’s waters or to settle for
the weaker standards that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection
has proposed. It is up to us to make sure
the EPA does its job and protects our waters!

The
Central Florida group who collected a record-breaking 400 petition signatures
at Earth Day in downtown Orlando!

The Suwanee St. John’s group for using a great model of land and roads to
educate folks on how quickly pollution can run off roads and land and into our
waterways fueling these “Slime Crimes”

The
Loxahatchee group who, despite having their Earth Day rained out, continued to
collect signatures in their local neighborhoods!

Volunteers
in Southwest Florida who attended three different Earth Day events and
collected almost 500 petition signatures in two weeks despite the rainy
weather!

Thanks to supporters
like you, we are VERY close to our signature goal! But it doesn’t stop here! We need your help to keep the pressure on and
pass our goal! Here’s how you can help…

It’s super
easy. E-mail President Obama right now
by following this link. And don’t forget to forward the link to your
friends! The EPA is going to release their decision soon and we need them to
hear from as many of us as possible! Help us spread the world by e-mail,
Facebook and Twitter!